“The Worthingtons and the Hirams and the John William Spayters,” said one.  “They travel all right.  They know what they want and they want a good deal, and they’re willing to pay for it.”

“Yes.  They’re not school teachers going over to improve their minds and contriving to cross in a big ship by economising in everything else.  Miss Vanderpoel’s sailing with the Worthingtons.  She’s got the best suite all to herself.  She’ll bring back a duke or one of those prince fellows.  How many millions has Vanderpoel?”

“How many millions.  How many hundred millions!” said his companion, gloating cheerfully over the vastness of unknown possibilities.  “I’ve crossed with Miss Vanderpoel often, two or three times when she was in short frocks.  She’s the kind of girl you read about.  And she’s got money enough to buy in half a dozen princes.”

“There are New Yorkers who won’t like it if she does,” returned the other.  “There’s been too much money going out of the country.  Her suite is crammed full of Jack roses, now, and there are boxes waiting outside.”

Salter moved away and heard no more.  He moved away, in fact, because he was conscious that to a man in his case, this dwelling upon millions, this plethora of wealth, was a little revolting.  He had walked down Broadway and seen the price of Jacqueminot roses, and he was not soothed or allured at this particular moment by the picture of a girl whose half-dozen cabins were crowded with them.

“Oh, the devil!” he said.  “It sounds vulgar.”  And he walked up and down fast, squaring his shoulders, with his hands in the pockets of his rough, well-worn coat.  He had seen in England something of the American young woman with millionaire relatives.  He had been scarcely more than a boy when the American flood first began to rise.  He had been old enough, however, to hear people talk.  As he had grown older, Salter had observed its advance.  Englishmen had married American beauties.  American fortunes had built up English houses, which otherwise threatened to fall into decay.  Then the American faculty of adaptability came into play.  Anglo-American wives became sometimes more English than their husbands.  They proceeded to Anglicise their relations, their relations’ clothes, even, in time, their speech.  They carried or sent English conventions to the States, their brothers ordered their clothes from West End tailors, their sisters began to wear walking dresses, to play out-of-door games and take active exercise.  Their mothers tentatively took houses in London or Paris, there came a period when their fathers or uncles, serious or anxious business men, the most unsporting of human beings, rented castles or manors with huge moors and covers attached and entertained large parties of shooters or fishers who could be lured to any quarter by the promise of the particular form of slaughter for which they burned.